The Secret Ingredient Your Holiday Desserts Might be Missing

Restaurant pastry chefs cull inspiration from all over the place—some look to music, others to farmer's markets. A few even look to science labs. But more than any other source, inspiration comes from memories—memories of childhood treats, memories of dishes they discovered while traveling.

Around this time of year, pastry chefs lean on nostalgia even more, as they look back on their family's holiday traditions to start new pastry traditions of their own. As these stories from the pastry chefs of Union Square Hospitality Group illustrate, the influences come from all over, from Serbian cakes and Korean candies to the classic desserts of old New York.

Pastry Chef Miro Uskokovic with his mother.

Courtesy of Miro Uskokovic

Pastry Chef Miro Uskokovic with his mother.Courtesy of Miro Uskokovic

A Mother's Love Of Baking

"I come from the very north region of Serbia, parts were the Ottoman Empire and parts belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so there was an East and West clash; you saw both elaborate cakes and then simple pies and the influence of the Mediterranean and Middle East. My mother wasn’t a professional baker, but she made cakes. She always had desserts on the table: cookies, layered cakes, her very famous chocolate torte, a chocolate sponge cake covered with hazelnuts, a chocolate mousse cake with a whole banana in the middle.

I can see her in myself: my love of chocolate, my love of nuts, and also the things I grew up eating. The very first dessert I put on the menu at Gramercy Tavern was based on her chocolate torte—a multi-layer chocolate cake with caramelized banana ice cream, crème fraiche, and chocolate sauce." —Miro Uskokovic, Gramercy Tavern and Untitled

A Love For Classic Americana

"I grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, a suburb of New York City, with a single, working Mom, so I didn’t grow up baking, because there wasn’t a lot of baking done. All of my childhood memories of baked goods are things like Sarah Lee cake mix, Cool Whip, instant pudding mix, Keebler graham cracker crust, and Haagen Daz Chocolate ice cream. For special occasions, especially at holidays, we would go to the Jewish bakeries to get black and white cookies, rugelach, babka, rainbow cookies,
stuff like that. It was very New York.

I go back to these things. I do rainbow cookies with really good ingredients, raspberry jam and chocolate ganache. During the Jewish holidays, we did babka in our pastry basket. Snickers bar was my all time favorite candy bar, and for Halloween we did a dessert with nougat, peanut butter and chocolate that tasted like a Snickers. Definitely at this time of year, the memories of what you ate come up." —Emily Isaac, Blue Smoke

Pastry chef Jessica Weiss with her mother, from a childhood recipe scrapbook.

Courtesy Jessica Weiss

A Love for The Non-Traditional

"I grew up in the kitchen baking with my Mom, and a lot of what I do reflects that. For Thanksgiving, my parents hated pumpkin, so we had lemon meringue pie instead. So even though it’s not traditional, we do frozen lemon meringue at Maialino.

At Christmas, my Mom made a ton of cookies: kolaches, pecan crescents, cookies everywhere. She also used to make two specific cakes—what she called a lady finger cake, a chocolate mouse cake surrounded by lady fingers, and a super-rich, super-decadent bread pudding with brandy sauce. Plus, we had my Grandma’s coffee cake, with cinnamon sugar and nutmeg, every Christmas morning. So many of those things have found their way onto my menu. At Maialino we have a killer cookie plate, and, starting for the holidays, coffee cake is going on the breakfast pastry menu." —Jessica Weiss, Maialino and Marta

A Love for Classic Korean

"I was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. When I was child, Korea didn't have much dessert culture. People couldn’t afford good desserts. Just having a meal was enough. I didn’t have a sweet tooth when I was child and having dessert was very special for me, like on someone's birthday, Christmas, New Years and holidays.

Besides special days, I used to eat lots of honeycomb candy, a kind of street candy. There were many places on the street selling it and kids were always drooling over these candies. After school in the summer, my grandma used to chop up watermelon and add condensed milk for my brothers and me. Those flavors remind me of childhood, and I have made melon sorbets with condensed milk many times.

Because I didn't eat lots of desserts growing up, when I do eat sweets today, I don’t like anything too sweet. I always try to make my desserts not too sweet." —Jiho Kim, The Modern